You know those days. You wake up annoyed and cranky, ready to drop-kick anything that gets in your way. What the heck is going on? There’s a good chance you’ve been invaded by the Jiminy Crankball.

What’s the Jiminy Crankball?

The Jiminy Crankball is a small, fuzzy invasive species that makes people cranky. He usually crawls in through the left ear, first infiltrating the brain and then moving throughout the rest of the body.

How You Get It

The Crankball species is especially adept at pinpointing weaknesses and certain circumstances that are basically begging for members to invade. These include lack of sleep, being hungry, or getting a $290 parking ticket in Phoenix.

Any annoyance that disrupts your normal routine can invite the Crankballl, as can stepping in cat puke and listening to bad house music.

Oh yeah, you may as well set up lawn chairs for the Crankballs during the monthly womanly thing. That’s when they come around in swarms.

How You Get Rid of It

The only way to eradicate the Crankball is to address and resolve the weakness that let him enter in the first place. Get some sleep. Eat some treats. Deal with the parking ticket. Get back into your normal routine. Clean up the cat puke. Shut down that godawful music. Take a hot bath and a nap.

What Else You Need to Know

Crankballs are highly tenacious, breed quickly, and are extremely contagious. Let them fester in your body for days on end, and you’ll end up surrounded by people who are equally as cranky as you are. It’s like going to work when you have the flu only to infect the whole office.

If you’re not sure of the exact weak point that let the Crankball in, try extra sleep or a healthy meal anyway. You can also talk to others about your crankiness. Crankballs prefer to live just under the skin in the dark. When they’re subjected to attention, laughter or light, they tend to rapidly flee.

Need more helpful hints for dealing with difficult things? Check out the rynski guide for dealing with jerks.

One of my bright ideas turned into one of the dumbest things I ever tried to do. The bright idea was to start my next art therapy project one morning before work. The topic was “spirit,” which I thought was innocuous enough, no?

Since Mom is cleaning out her basement and had sent me a box of greeting cards she’s saved since I was born, I thought the cards would make a fantastic collage to show the “spirit” of love, the “spirit” of family and friends, and the “spirit” of the many dearly departed whose signatures punctuated the well wishes.

Twenty minutes into the project, I was a weeping mess.

It only got worse from there.

Dang Sneaky Grief

Let’s just say the topic of “spirit” quickly turned into a study in grief. I was grieving my grandparents, great-grandparents, and people I didn’t even remember who signed some of the cards because I was sure they must be dead by now. I was grieving my dad. The departed family cat. The lost innocence of every baby that eventually grows up and becomes yet another cynical adult.

That project is currently on hold, as I still had a lineup of work assignments to complete for the week. But I did learn a valuable lesson: art is great for healing grief – just not on a workday.

Thinking back, every grief-related art project had been painful while it was in the works. Several that immediately come to mind include:

A velvet painting of dog Sawyer chasing demons, created a year after he died

A velvet painting of dog Dini as an angel bumblebee, created several months after she died

A happy heaven spider created from my dad’s hip and knee replacement parts, created several months after he died

An ugly green and black painting thing with the word “grief” created while Sawyer was dying

Aside from the painting that actually reads “grief,” the other projects weren’t created with the intention of healing grief. It just kind of worked out that way.

They were immensely painful as they were being created. But once I allowed the pain to fully and wholly flood the entire essence of my being as I was actively creating, it somehow lessened.

Art has a groovy way of providing relief from depression, anxiety, fears, anger – and yes, even grief. Even when I’m creating memorial art for others, I can somehow feel the load of woes lightening.

But Doesn’t It Hurt to Look at the Grief Art?

Once the flood of grief has saturated your soul and the tide eventually subsides, you can even bear to look at the art you’ve created during that dark moment. Heck, you can even come to enjoy it.

Sawyer chasing demons is now the central piece in the living room, complete with its own personal light, making me happy that Sawyer found something to do in heaven

Dini on velvet buzzes happily beneath Sawyer, as she always was the second fiddle

Dad’s happy heavenly spider sits pertly near my nightstand, reminding me Dad’s spirit is with me from the moment I wake up to the moment I head to bed

The ugly green and black grief painting thing? That’s in the garage somewhere. I think. It was painful to look at. Not because it brought back the memories of grieving, but just because it’s so dang ugly.

I’m sure my finished “spirit” collage will likewise find its place when complete. Its next installment will just have to wait for a day where I don’t have six assignments lined up to compete with my wailing and tears.

Artist comments:

I thought I was being really clever here, creating a fish where each spike/fin thing represented a different community to which I belong. We got the artist community, writer community, Reiki community, girlfriend community, sister community, daughter community, dog lover community and so on.

When I was done, however, I realized my creation for the topic of community was a poisonous fish that pretty much kills anything that comes near it. Hahahahhaah.

Told you this was insightful stuff.

Too bad I’ll be missing the group session on this topic as I’ll be out of town. What a doozy that one would be!

Whether you live in a New York City high rise or a Tucson one-story house, birds always seem to find a way to hurl themselves at whatever windows you may have. Not only does the bird strike’s sickening “thump” tend to interrupt whatever you’re doing, but it also startles the dogs and often leaves a dead, injured or completely stunned bird lying on the ground.

And even birds that are merely stunned can quickly end up injured or dead once the dogs head out to investigate what made the sickening thump.

I recently saved a colorful tanager from certain death after he crashed into our Tucson door wall and then sat at the base of it having what looked like panic attack. He was panting like a freight engine. His eyes were the size of saucers. And his beak was frozen open in an ongoing grimace.

He was so out of it he let me pick gently pick him up and place him on the patio table, away from the certain death from dogs zone. There he sat panting for at least an hour, pooping at least once, until he finally gathered his wits back enough to hop onto a nearby oleander branch.

I vowed I would do whatever I could to make sure this would not happen again. So I checked out some options to prevent bird strikes into windows. Here’s what I found:

Remove the Windows

While this could work if you live in a climate that doesn’t rain, snow, dip below 72 degrees, or have insects, removing the windows is not a feasible option in most cases. Besides, you’d still have gaping openings in your walls what would beckon birds to fly on in. If you think a tanager pooping once on a patio table is bad, you should see what the average bird can do to your living room carpet.

Feasibility score (1 to 10): 0

Cover the Windows

Exterior shades could cover the window glass, as could meaty chunks of plywood or flat, black paint. But do you really want to sit around in the dark all day?

Feasibility score (1 to 10): 2 (if you don’t mind the dark)

Try Bird Strike Window Decals

This is the option I initially wanted to try, although it did take some time to find decals that:

Weren’t in the shape of birds, butterflies or some other fru fru design

Weren’t ugly white

Didn’t resemble those things you stick in bathtubs to stop from slipping

Looked attractive from the exterior as well as the interior

I ended up ordering two different decal sets, a cool-looking mandala and a circle-spiral-ey thing.

One issue I was already expecting to encounter was longevity. Other window decals have peeled, faded and otherwise fallen prey to window washing, constant sun and other elements and ailments to which exterior windows are regularly exposed.

The other issue was the wait. The cool spiral-ey set was coming all the way from Germany and would take at least 10 days to arrive. After witnessing the panic of the tanager, I knew I couldn’t wait a single second to put something in place. So I moved on to the next solution.

Only one bird came close to crashing into the window since I installed the sign about two weeks back. He was heading for the glass at high speed, but then slowed down enough when he saw the sign to change course and only make a “tap” noise instead of a “SPLAT.”

I KNEW birds could read English. Not a bird crash, bird bash or bird strike since!

Thus I’d definitely vote for a unique sign that lasts for years, can be moved to different windows, cities or time zones as needed, and ensures birds get the message that you love them and want to keep them safe.

Feasibility score (1 to 10): 10

Get creative and make your own double-sided bird crash prevention sign – or buy one from ryndustries. Either way, the birds will thank you.

Who is Gillespie?

Gillespie was this chunky little ornery dog we met at the dog park. He was a real jerk.

What made him jerky?

He followed us around snarling. Then he tried to get between my own dogs and me, snarling at them if they came near me. Then he incessantly sniffed butts while snarling some more. He finally snarled one too many times in my dog Gigi’s face and Gigi attacked him.

Then what happened?

Then we left.

What were Gillespie’s owners doing during all this?

Just sitting there on a bench. They finally said the dog’s name after the attack. Maybe to prevent another one?

Or maybe they wanted Gillespie to get attacked and killed so they didn’t have to bring him back home.

No, people can’t be that cruel – even with a jerky dog.

So what should people do if they have a jerky dog?

Not bring him out in public.

And warn any visitors to the home that a jerky dog is on the property.